Previous Home Next

phan2

The F-100's were parked in concrete hardened revetments at Phan Rang. The base was rocketed by the Viet Cong from the surrounding mountains about once a month. They aimed for the planes on the flight lines and rarely hit anything of merit. These attacks usually happened at night. The barracks sat on a hill which overlooked the base. When a raid happened the siren would go off and we were required to leave our bunks and head for a bunker. They hit a barracks about a month before I arrived but that was rare and during the day. It got to be that either you didn't get up at all or, as often happened, went outside and sat in a lawn chair to watch the show. One time they hit an F-100 directly in the cockpit. We had to print 500 copies of every image we shot that night because everybody at bases around the world wanted to see the" F-100 hit by a Viet Cong rocket."